A Flemm Blog

I'm going to get into lines, but I'm going to start with a couple of tips to grocery stores (and their patrons).

Store - staff your 'express' isles with your competent employees.
The whole point of the 'under x-items' isle is speed. In a regular isle, you expect a wait. If the cashier has to make a quick phone call to check something, or call someone over, it's not a huge deal, because there are still 2 full carts in front of you.

In the express, you're only waiting behind 2 grapefruits, a carton of milk, and a loaf of bread, 3 bags of chips, and a head of lettuce. Having to ask for help takes about as much time as ringing through an entire customer's basket. So please, if you have any competent employees, use them to staff the express isle.

Patrons - just wait a minute.
You don't have to stuff your entire cart on the conveyor the moment there are 6 inches of it available - it will move. You can always load the conveyor faster than the cashier can scan the items, so even if it's completely empty at some point, there still won't be a hold up. Wait until there's a decent amount of space on the conveyor, and the person in front of you has moved up.

It's is segue time
[Insert segue here]

You idiots
There is a fundamental understanding that most line-waiters seem to be missing, so I'll explain it now. Your distance from the front of the line is NOT what determines how long it will take you to get there. The only thing that matters is how quickly things are happening at the front of the line. So ... do you know what this means? This means don't stand so bloody close to me, it doesn't help!  Maybe you just love breathing down my neck, fine, but you need to know that rubbing your body up against me will have NO EFFECT whatsoever on how quickly you reach the front of the line.  Get a grip on reality people.

I've found a neat trick which allows the font to be changed from the standard Marker Felt:

to Helvetica:


How is this accomplished? Simply add one of these international keyboards in Settings > General >  Keyboards > International Keyboards:

Korean


Japanese

Add one of these non-English characters at any point in your text, and the font will switch.  Now delete the character, and switch back to the English keyboard.

Note: I haven't tried all keyboards, but it definitely works with these two.

An huge pet peeve of mine is the use of empty coffee cups in television and film. I've been surprised a number of times by how few people seem to realize this. In my opinion, Scrubs is one of the worst offenders, so I've brought you this clip. Just try to tell me it doesn't make you sick to your stomach.



Also, check out this one:

Coffee Beanery In "Scrubs"


Those empty lid-less perfectly-white cups are bad, but I think the worst is when you see them buy a coffee with a lid on it, then proceed to put their mouth on it and tip it 90º. If you have a full cup of coffee and do that, you'll end up with scalding coffee all over your face.  Sorry, I couldn't find a clip of this.

Bottom line, put some water in your coffee cups if you want your props to seem believable when there's a lid.  No lid?  Get some coffee.  That way when someone walks on screen with coffee, no other small parts of me will need to die.

Have you heard? Steve and his Conservatives want to be our big brothers! Isn't this wonderful?! I've always dreamed of having a big brother, but I didn't think it would ever be possible. He could teach me about girls and buy me booze, while I could bug him and his older friends at every chance I get! We'd go to the park ... play sports and such ... man, it would be GREAT!

And now what was previously unthinkable could become a reality. Big bro Steve. Imagine it. When I'm being picked on in the school yard I can say things like:

Hey, you guys'd better stop! I'll get my big brother to beat you up! Do you know who he is? He's our supreme master. Our overlord. Our Lord and Saviour. He's Steven Harper!

What a world it will be.

Confused?

The Conservatives have tabled two new bills (last Thursday, I believe) aimed at updating the way law enforcement interacts with Internet Service Providers (ISPs, obviously). The reasoning behind this is to catch pedophiles, terrorists and criminals, and that's a good thing. I'd like to highlight two aspects, however:

Part of one of the bills would require all ISPs to update their infrastructure so their network supports interception (read: it must be possible to monitor the traffic of anyone using the internet in Canada). While I don't see this as being a huge privacy problem, I'm not sure I feel good about it, but I felt it was worth a mention.

Part of the other bill would give law enforcement access to the personal information of any subscriber (name, location, websites) without a warrant. Allow me to emphasize that last bit:

WITHOUT A WARRANT

Of this, I am absolutely certain of how I feel. I don't like it ... I don't think it's a good thing to allow law enforcement the freedom to monitor us without any justification. As I said, I don't like it.

BUT, any amount of basic privacy is totally worth giving up to get a big brother like Steve! So bring it on Conservatives, watch me like a hawk. It'll all be worth it when Stephen messes up my hair and says something like: "You're alright kid".

As I've mentioned, I've had 3.0 running for a while, but I haven't bothered with updating the carrier file to enable tethering. I've been patiently waiting until the 17th for the official 3.0 rollout to get that feature (luckilly Fido doesn't suck balls like AT&T). I was surprised, however, by iTunes notifying me of a carrier update available today!

I clicked 'download and update', and within 5 seconds under Settings > General > Network, I had the tethering options! I fired it up, and boom! I'm using my iPhone's 3G connection on my MacBook via USB while charging the phone. In fact, I'm posting this over that very connection.

With the OS 2.0 - 2.2.1 I was jailbroken, and tethring using PDANet. While it was a decent solution, it pales in comparison to the official iPhone tethering. With PDANet, the connection was made to the computer with an ad-hoc WiFi network, and with the phone using 3G and WiFi at the same time, it couldn't charge as fast as the battery was being drained. In addition to the power-sucking, it often was very difficult to get working, and seemed to require an unsecured network (not something I'm a fan of).

This official solution is pleasant, secure, battery-healthy, and does not require me to jailbreak. This pleases me, which is why I've written this.

So I have been using the iPhone OS 3.0 for a while now (thanks to my being a developer), and it's been pretty great. There were some bugs and crashes early on, but by beta 5, it's become pretty solid. Yesterday Apple announced the next version of iPhone software, and I must say that with the new 3.0 running on the new iPhone 3G S, the iPhone will be very very close to being everything I want it to be.

Here's my list of issues with the iPhone 3G running OS 2.2.1

Lame, no focus, no video camera
Lack of search
Lack of voice control
Lack of tethering
Lack of compass (I often have to figure out which way I'm facing in google maps)
Inability to download over 10 MB from the iTunes store/app store over the cell network
Battery life
There are some more, but these are most of the big ones.

With the exception of the 10 MB limit (and we'll see about the battery life), all of these issues are addressed through a combination of OS 3.0 and iPhone 3G S. This means that I will have no choice but to sell my 3G and buy a 32 GB 3G S.

How were they able to get this vanity plate?

(click to enlarge)

As well as numerous other instances of hairline cracks in different locations on the computer:  Notably the bottom casing, and the back of the screen hinge.


The first issue (hand-rest cracks), has recently been acknowledged by Apple as a design flaw, so they're replacing the damaged parts free of charge.  The other parts were a little more tricky.  I phoned apple, and asked them to create a 'warranty exception' for my computer.  I expected this to be a bit of a battle, but they said "okay sir, I'll create that right now".  This allowed me to bring it down to Carbon Computing (an authorized retailer/servicer of Apple products in Kitchener), and most of the casing is being replaced free of charge.

I actually took this one step further: I told the people at Apple that my battery had the cracking on the bottom of it, and it's been functioning rather poorly recently.  I was pretty sure this was a long shot, but the guy told me he'd add that to the 'warranty exception'.

So, in a week, my computer should have a brand new case, a new battery, and I'll have a legal copy of Leopard again.  Solid.

I must say that every person I spoke with at both Apple and Carbon Computing were extremely knowledgeable and helpful.  When I had to go through a similar ordeal for Halyna with Microsoft, I spent hours playing phone tag with confused people in India claiming their names were 'Mike', 'Jim', and my personal favourite, 'Frank'.

So there I am, sitting by the water in Vancouver, drinking a coffee, minding my own business, when I was approached by two sharply dressed men with a message.  Now, I'm not interested in Jesus, or Jehovah, but I thought - what the hell, no point in being rude - and decided to hear them out.

The message: "The end of the world is near".

The proof: "The good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come"
[Mathew 24:14]

My interpretation: these idiots are trying to end the world!!

If people just stop preaching this 'awesome news', then the world won't end.  Seems pretty basic to me, but maybe I'm just really, really smart.

When they were done, they gave me some reading material, and were on their way.  Now, there's a LOT of humour to be found in these magazines they gave me, but I'm only going to point out two articles.

1: When Giants Roamed Europe
This is a nice little piece about wooly mammoths, and fossilization.  What's funny about that?  The fact that not once do they give a time-frame.  It talks about when the first discovery of mammoth fossils occured, but never how old the fossils are.  The article goes into detail about the process of fossilization, but never mentions how long it takes - reading this article, you'd think it happens over night.  I love how they appear to be educating about science (read: fact), but omit the parts that could poke holes in their story. 

2: Why don't girls like me?
I think I'll provide an excerpt: "Youre old enough to date. You'd like to find someone who is attractive and who shares your religious beliefs. (1 Corinthians 7:39) In the past, though, each time you tried to start a relationship, you felt as though you crashed and burned.  If you'd like to get to know a girl better, what factors do you need to consider? And what Bible principles would you do well to remember?"

It goes on to teach all about manners, conversation skills, dressing well, respect, etc.  Shame I didn't have it when I met Lyn, it sure would have saved her a lot of grief. 

I love the idea: "Recruit lonely young people by helping them get some action". (I think that verse is from John).